Yet Another Way to Turn Off Internal LCD Display of MacBook Pro With Lid Open

We have covered a handful of different ways to disable the internal screen on a MacBook Pro/Air while keeping the laptops lid open and the computer turned on, ranging from a command line approach, dimming brightness or using sleep, and even a silly magnet trick, but for whatever reason there have always been a few users who can’t seem to get any of the methods to work, or they find them cumbersome to bother with. If you fall into that camp, here is yet another approach to disabling the internal screen of a Mac laptop while the lid is open, this method is easy enough and has been verified to work on a variety of MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air machines running OS X Lion or later.

As with the other methods, the MagSafe power cable must be connected to the MacBook in order for this to work.

Open System Preferences and click “Mission Control”, then click on “Hot Corners”

Select a hot corner and pull down the menu to select “Put Display to Sleep”

Now connect the external display to the Mac and move the cursor to the newly created sleep corner to turn off the internal display

Close the MacBook lid and wait a few seconds before opening the lid again, the internal display should stay off while the external display will be powered on

This approach lets you continue to use the MacBooks built-in keyboard and trackpad too.

For those wondering why you’d want to do this at all, keeping the lid open with the screen off serves these purposes; it allows for maximum cooling of the MacBook because heat dissipates through the keyboard, and it allows the GPU to devote all of it’s power to the external screen. These two perks make this a popular trick for anyone doing intensive graphics work and for gamers.

This combination of Pauls and Johns techniques worked fine for me on my Macbook Pro running OS X 10.7.4:
**Preparation**

1. Turn off display mirroring
2. Open System Preferences and click “Mission Control”, then click on “Hot Corners”
3. Select a hot corner and pull down the menu to select “Put Display to Sleep”. Then “OK”.
4. This might be needed: Put the menu bar on the external display. When this is not connected the internal will pick it up automatically.

**Method**

1. Put macbook into normal clamshell mode (external display on, macbook lid closed)
2. Using a hot corner (on the external display), put the external display to sleep like described in the above article (at the end of this step, you should have a closed macbook and external display off).
3. Open macbook lid and the external display should switch back on automatically (while keeping the macbook display off) or just tap a key on your bluetooth or wired keyboard.

1) Put the display to sleep — however you want
2) Close the lid
3) Move the mouse, click mouse button, etc. so the external display is awaken. You’ll notice that the external display flashes a bit
4) When the password box is displayed, open the lid
5) Enter password
6) Internal LCD screen is disabled

This worked great under Mac OS X 10.7.4, but after the last update to 10.7.5 it doesn’t work more. The built-in display turns off really, but a few seconds after opening the lid it lights up again. Do you have any suggestions?

I was struggling with this and several other methods to turn off my MacBook (Late 2007) built in display. Another article mentioned changing the Primary Display. Once I dragged the white bar at the top to the external monitor and performed this magnet trick it all came together. Thanks for the great advice, it’s much appreciated!

The NVRAM method etc no longer work in Mountain Lion. I found a solution, though:
1) Do a restart, then close the clamshell while waiting for the restart to complete
2) The Macbook will detect the external display during the restart, and will use it as the primary (and only) display
3) Once the restart is completed (with the external display used as primary display, open the clamshell. The built-in display will remain off, but you can now use the keyboard and touchpad. Voila!

2. Using a hot corner (on the external display), put the external display to sleep like described in the above article (at the end of this step, you should have a closed macbook and external display off).

3. Open macbook lid and the external display should switch back on automatically (while keeping the macbook display off) or just tap a key on your bluetooth or wired keyboard.

note: I also found that in this mode you can disconnect the power cable without the displays reverting back to extended like normal clamshell mode.

Hope this helps some people who have problems using the method in this article. Let us know!

Didn’t work for me either. Tried it several times just to make sure. I have my MBP hooked up to a Vizio 32″ external HD TV. Not sure if it matters if it’s true monitor, or Thunderbolt cable to a HD TV or not…

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